1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an operating information control system of a construction machine and a construction machine therefore.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, with respect to the rental of a construction machine such as a hydraulic excavator, it is general that the rental fee is calculated on the basis of an actual using period instead of a lending period of a construction machine. More specifically, operating information such as engine start/stop time, operating time, and fuel residual quantity are once stored in a memory such as an IC card set in a construction machine, and a rental company reads the operating information after completion of lending to calculate the rental fee.
However, in the above method for controlling operating information by the IC card, accurate operating information cannot be obtained unless the IC card is set in a construction machine at the start of work. Further, in a case where operating information is read, it is necessary to take the IC card to the rental company to put the operating information into a host computer of the rental company through a readout device. Therefore, in the rental company having many machines, the reading process is cumbersome.
In view of the foregoing, it has been proposed an operating information control system capable of transmitting the operating information to the rental company through a communication satellite to control the received information at a real time.
However, since in this system, operating information is transmitted making use of a satellite communication, a costly communication fee occurs. In a case that making use of a satellite communication costs about 5,000 yen/month per machine, when the rental company having, for example, 1,000 construction machines intends to perform this sort of operating control, the communication fee of sixty million yen per year occurs. Such an expensive communication fee as described is the heavy burden on the management of the company, thus posing a problem that this system is short in practicability.